For text updates, where there's literally a cursor which moves at typing speeds, update frequency is quite low. Where you're updating or paging through documents, paginated navigation (where the whole screen refreshes at once, then remains unchanged for several seconds to minutes or longer) is quite efficient.
It seems much more practical (if a little less power-efficient) to implement the no diff -> no refresh logic for screen regions in the display hardware. The RAM and logic for a display-side framebuffer can't be expensive today, a couple of Euros for the extra board space and chip(s). If that stuff takes off, just additional transistors in the all-in-one ASIC.
For the whole screen, that more or less already exists in laptop hardware: "panel self-refresh". HDMI and DiplayPort might need a new extension or something? Is there anything?